Top 10 Industries to Grapple with Slow Growth in 2013

From activities related to real estate to dry cleaning and laundry services, a number of industries are still struggling to boost revenue dating back to at least 2009.

Financial research firm Sageworks Inc. in Raleigh N.C., tracked the 10 slowest growing industries from its proprietary database of privately held company financial statements aggregated by industry.

Each day, approximately 1,000 of these financial statements are collected by the company from accounting firms, banks, and credit unions through a cooperative data model with Sageworks clients, according to the firm.

The slowest growing industries in the United States are:

2008 2009 2010 2011 Last 12 months

1. Land subdivision -24.4%-16.5% -1.0% -2.3%-2.5%

2. Residential building -9.5% -13.2% 2.4% 3.4% 3.6%

construction

3. Business, professional, 4.4% 1.8% 0.3% 4.1% 2.8%

labor, political &

similar organizations

4. Lawn, garden 1.6% -5.6% 4.2% 5.7% 5.2%

equipment

& supplies stores

5. Office supplies, -0.9% -4.0% 4.1% 4.8% 4.8%

stationary, gift

stores

6. Printing & 1.7% -9.1% 4.7% 4.7% 4.5%

related support

activities

7. Activities related -5.3%-4.9% 2.5% 4.2% 4.0%

to real estate

8. Death care 8.1% 1.0% 4.5% 3.6% 4.1%

services

9. Other amusement 1.9% 0.1% 3.6% 4.9% 4.4%

and recreation

industries

10. Dry cleaning & 4.7% 1.8% -0.5% 5.0% 4.9%

laundry services

Looking at statements from Dec. 18, 2011 to Dec. 18, 2012, at least three others in addition to land subdivision are tied to the housing market, said Brad Schaefer, Sageworks analyst.

“Given the steep declines that housing sectors had during the recession, it’s not surprising to still see them on the list,” Schaefer said. “We don’t know for sure what’s going to happen, but it would appear that for a lot of these construction-related industries, sales have been improving since 2010. They’re not seeing increases in growth rates, necessarily, but they are seeing positive sales growth.”

Overall, most industries in Sageworks’ database are showing revenue growth. However, if you look at 2009, more than half of these industries were seeing sales decline, Schaefer pointed out.

“It also means that these industries may not be back to pre-recession levels yet, even though they are growing now,” Schaefer said. “You can see that a lot of them had pretty steep declines, so it doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re doing great now, but they are improving.”